A3000UX up and running AMIX again!

[graffias79]

Hi

Great that you found all that back information.  I bet among a few of those 13 Amigas, three were of the A2500s I have in the garage still.  I cannot find Amix on their HDDs however, they all have KS/WB 2.04.

Joliet is a suburb of Chicago so that part of it makes sense.

As for the A2065 NIC.. hmm  :-P sorry I needed one for my A3000T but from what I understand they are not too difficult to obtain.  I'm not sure of the graphics card, I didn't see anything like that in any of the Amigas, except one of the A2500s had a Microway Flickerfixer AGA or whatever they are called cards in the video slot.  My 3000T already has flickerfixing (Thank you C= !) and a Picasso II.

[adolescent]

@Orjan

The one I looked at had Unix on the HD, and a tape, but no drive.  It was a lower end model just like the A3000 (030/25MHz, 1M/4M, 100M HD) I ended up with.  Although, it may have been how Creative Computers was selling them.

[Holley]

Thats very neat ... my god we're all nerds!

[HopperJF]

9697 days? Thats like over 30 years, lol

[shIva]

it would be a cool thing to compile the dnetc client for amix :-D - just to see how the stats server handles this.

[Krusher]

My wish was always to have an Amiga 3000UX/t with Unix on it

I honoustly don't remember if there was a towered model with UNIX now though? I think there was.

Bizarre tower, I know, but still, something I wanted to have. To me it was the Holy Grail of computing at the time (hey, I was only like, 18 at the time)

Me, more or less left the Amiga now, although keeping an eye on OS4 and the A1 board, but it's a longshot. Too late, too expensive, too small market. But hey, I could be wrong (Please!)

Anyway, WAY to go on the running AMIX!!

[Failure]

Matt_H wrote:
I think Commodore used to sell 3000UX packages with a 2065 and 2410 graphics board. I see you've already got a 2065 on the way, but if you could get a 2410, you'd probably have a killer AMIX rig. I've never seen one for sale, though. Ever. :-(

Yes.  I don't expect of find one of those, although I am looking for one.  Probably what I will do is just redirect the Amiga's display to another X server on the network, so that I am not stuck with 1-bit(!) color.  But I can't do that until I get the ethernet card :-/

I'm getting more software on the machine despite the lack of networking using Kermit (I wonder how many remember that) through the serial port at a stately 500 CPS, approx.  So far I have compiled gzip, and am currently transferring the screen utility to the Amiga.  I think screen will make working on a slower machine like that much more pleasant!  Thankfully it already had tar, since the sources were 4 meg and would have taken a couple hours to transfer.

I was able to make Amix 2.03 install floppies yesterday too, thanks to Kermit.  These were able to boot my other 3000 with 3.1 ROMs, but it didn't see the 2MB memory card plugged into one of the Zorro slots, only the memory on the motherboard.

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Failure

[Matt_H]

Something else I just thought of; from the BBoAHW:
"The A3000UX is fully capable of running AmigaOS in every way the 'normal' A3000 is but was supplied with the special Kickstart 1.4 ROMs that were designed to either boot UNIX or load the real Kickstart from a file."

What version ROMs are in your 3000UX? I've got a standard 3000 with 1.4 ROMs, but there's no option anywhere on the bootmenu for UNIX, even ghosted out. I'd love to get AMIX onto this machine to test it out.

[Orjan]

I always thought that the A3000 and the A3000UX was exactly the same machine, only that the UX was shipped with Amix instead of AmigaOS... And the "special" optional cards...

[adolescent]

Amix works with 3.1 ROMS, so I doubt there is anything special about the 1.4 bootstrap roms that it came with.  Maybe the new owner can give it the test and see.  IIRC, the only thing you could do with the standard bootstraps was to choose the kickstart version (It's been a long time, I swapped the bootstraps out after the first time I lost my kickstart file).

[Dalamar]

I've been fighting for a long time to get AMIX on my 3000.  It's not a UX but I'm sure the systems were the same.   I do have the tape drive but it's having real problems so I need to take it apart.  After that comes the hurdle of recreating an install tape.  I've tried the stuff from the mmhart web site but I can't be sure it's working given that the tape drive isn't very stable.  I may hit you up for questions in the near future.  :-)

[Failure]

Matt_H wrote:
What version ROMs are in your 3000UX? I've got a standard 3000 with 1.4 ROMs, but there's no option anywhere on the bootmenu for UNIX, even ghosted out. I'd love to get AMIX onto this machine to test it out.

You'll have to forgive my ignorance of pre-3.1 ROMs here, I can describe what I have but I don't know if it's different than what is standard.  Basically, the boot menu has kickstart options to load 1.3 and 2.0 from HD or floppy.  If I select 2.0 HD, it loads the kickstart from HD, reboots the system and begins loading AmigaOS 2.x (this doesn't complete, as it tries to finish booting from the network...?).  If I do not interact with the boot menu, it loads UNIX.  If I do not interact with the boot menu, but I put a bootable WB 2.0 floppy in the drive, it begins to boot AmigaOS but fails (I forget the error).  If I do the 2.0 HD option from the boot menu, with the floppy inserted, it boots WB 2.0 from the floppy.

Sorry my description must sound like I'm calling AOL tech support, but I have never used any but 3.1 ROMs!

Regarding the AMIX tapes, I've read the descriptions of all the problems people were having there as well.  But it seems that the people who were trying to make tapes were doing so from another UNIX?  The install script is very simple, so if the cpio files are on the tape in any order it seems like it should work, the problem may be that the Amiga simply can't read the tape written on another system.  It's a stretch but once I get ethernet on the thing, I will try copying the files over and making an install tape from AMIX.  If that works I'd be happy to provide copies.

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Failure

[Matt_H]

Failure wrote:

You'll have to forgive my ignorance of pre-3.1 ROMs here, I can describe what I have but I don't know if it's different than what is standard. Basically, the boot menu has kickstart options to load 1.3 and 2.0 from HD or floppy.

That sounds normal. Although I can't boot 1.3 from the hard drive since I don't have an appropriate A3000 kickstart ROM for 1.3 (have to use SuperKickstart - wish there was a way to extract the 1.3 image from it!).

If I select 2.0 HD, it loads the kickstart from HD, reboots the system and begins loading AmigaOS 2.x (this doesn't complete, as it tries to finish booting from the network...?).

Also sounds normal. As to why the boot fails, if the UNIX side of the machine was once hooked up to a large corporate network, it's probable that the  Amiga side is too. There was once a full port of Novell Netware for the Amiga, maybe it's trying to load that?

If I do not interact with the boot menu, it loads UNIX.  If I do not interact with the boot menu, but I put a bootable WB 2.0 floppy in the drive, it begins to boot AmigaOS but fails (I forget the error).  If I do the 2.0 HD option from the boot menu, with the floppy inserted, it boots WB 2.0 from the floppy.

So it sounds like UNIX is the default, unless overridden. That seems logical since there's no way to manually start it up.
EDIT: But now that I think about it, what will happen on a 3.1 machine? Maybe it just follows boot priority (and can be  manually changed by picking a different boot partition)?

Sorry my description must sound like I'm calling AOL tech support, but I have never used any but 3.1 ROMs!

Don't worry about it ;-)

Regarding the AMIX tapes, I've read the descriptions of all the problems people were having there as well.  But it seems that the people who were trying to make tapes were doing so from another UNIX?  The install script is very simple, so if the cpio files are on the tape in any order it seems like it should work, the problem may be that the Amiga simply can't read the tape written on another system.  It's a stretch but once I get ethernet on the thing, I will try copying the files over and making an install tape from AMIX.  If that works I'd be happy to provide copies.

That'd be a great historical service. I just hope there aren't legal problems.

[Failure]

Well I figure, it's already available on the internet for some years... :-)

Maybe "they" don't mind because nobody seems to be able to install it!

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Failure

[graffias79]

If I do not interact with the boot menu, it loads UNIX. If I do not interact with the boot menu, but I put a bootable WB 2.0 floppy in the drive, it begins to boot AmigaOS but fails (I forget the error). If I do the 2.0 HD option from the boot menu, with the floppy inserted, it boots WB 2.0 from the floppy.

I believe it's looking for icon.library or font.library or something to that effect... I got that once too.  I don't think Kickstart 1.4 has all the necessary libraries and device to actually load Amiga OS

-Jamie

[Dalamar]

Regarding the AMIX tapes, I've read the descriptions of all the problems people were having there as well.  But it seems that the people who were trying to make tapes were doing so from another UNIX?  The install script is very simple, so if the cpio files are on the tape in any order it seems like it should work, the problem may be that the Amiga simply can't read the tape written on another system.  It's a stretch but once I get ethernet on the thing, I will try copying the files over and making an install tape from AMIX.  If that works I'd be happy to provide copies.

If I get my tape drive up and running, I will try to make it again as well and would be happy to help with copies also.  I've been making them from NetBSD running on my 4000D.  Aside from the hardware issue, I think the creation process is working.  I think the drive will be disassembled this weekend Amiwest permitting.